


Questions

by katecholamine



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship/Love, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-20
Updated: 2012-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:18:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katecholamine/pseuds/katecholamine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer Reid has been in love with Emily for far too long. What will happen if she discovers his true feelings?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Relief

He couldn't make himself stop.  
  
He, Dr. Spencer Reid, who held two bachelor's degrees in Psychology and Sociology and three PhDs in Mathematics, Chemistry, and Engineering, who worked at the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI and witnessed sexual deviance on a daily basis, couldn't make himself stop.  
  
Because it wasn't the prostitutes he wanted. It was her.  
  
And every time she stood a little too closely and he breathed in her cinnamon scent, every time he watched her raven hair fall down into her face when she fell asleep on the plane, every time she stared at him - stared _through_ him, it seemed - with those coal-black eyes, he felt his pants tighten and knew he had to have her.  
  
He had to have Emily Prentiss.  
  
But he couldn't have her. He would never have her. And that was the part that made his heart ache with desire instead of his groin.  
  
During work, he'd sneak onto his iPhone and start looking at craigslist, clicking on link after link in a desperate search to find the one who looked most like her.  
  
It made it easier to get through the day, knowing that he'd arrive at his apartment, take a shower, and answer the door to a similar long-lashed brunette who didn't mind if he called her "Emily" and who called him by his first name, which he treasured each time the real Emily did.  
  
There was never much time for talking, though, and that's how he preferred it. It preserved the fantasy. After opening the door, he'd pay in advance and lead her to the bedroom without any small talk, envisioning himself as the kind of cool, confident man that Emily would want - instead of the nerdy boy genius she saw as just another member of her BAU family.  
  
He never kissed them on the mouth. After hours and hours of learning the intricacies of Emily's lips, he intuitively knew that kissing the mouth of another woman would only ruin the fantasy.  
  
He knew, for example, precisely how she'd gently bite her lip when she was thinking and how she'd bite down hard on her lower lip when she was trying to suppress her emotional reaction to a case. He knew how the right side of her lips would turn slightly upward into a smirk when they were all joking around. He knew how her full lips would pout with the corners downward when she was unhappy with herself and how she'd pout more deeply and evenly when she was concerned about someone on the team or about a potential victim.  
  
Dr. Spencer Reid also knew that he spent far too much time thinking about his colleague's mouth.  
  
When he was with the prostitutes, he didn't bother with foreplay. Because he'd never been with a woman he hadn't paid for, he considered foreplay something sacred, something to be shared between lovers, and these women weren't his lovers. They were substitutes. They were a means of release. They were the reason he could go to work every day and not need to excuse himself to the bathroom to quickly stroke his hard cock and come, groaning, into the toilet within seconds.  
  
For a while, after his mild crush on Emily had turned into hopeless infatuation, that had been enough. Until the day his boss, SSA Aaron Hotchner, had walked into the bathroom at the very time his knees were beginning to buckle and he could feel his orgasm building in the depths of his groin, only seconds before reaching the point of no return. Terrified that Hotch would think it was one of the cases and not one of the agents resulting in his uncontrollable need for sexual release, that was the day Reid vowed never to give into his impulses at work again. That was also the day he sought out a prostitute's services for the very first time.  
  
That day was nearly four years ago.  
  
He justified it in part because it never interfered with his work. It never interfered with his life at all, really, and it took far more time to find a woman who looked enough like Emily to excite him than it did to actually engage in the act. itself. Which might have been why Dr. Spencer Reid kept a secret folder containing all of the craigslist postings and photographs of the women he'd hired, never using the same escort more than once. Release was not the same as relief, after all, and there was no relieving his unrequited love for Emily Prentiss.  
  
Even during the act, he'd purposefully squint, distorting the woman's image so she could pass for Emily. He would tell her to take off her clothes as he awkwardly disrobed, his cock already hard and straining against his underwear. After rolling on a condom, he'd climb on top and push himself inside of her, alternately opening and closing his eyes to try and blur his mental image of Emily with the image of the brunette underneath him and thrust his hips deeply and rapidly until he felt his balls draw up underneath him and his cock throb over and over again as he came in spurts, crying out Emily's name.  
  
Afterward, he always felt profound shame and would show the woman to the door without meeting her eyes. He always promised himself that this was the last time, that he'd never do it again.  
  
He always knew it was a lie.  
  
This time, though, he was really trying - channeling all of his energy into attempts to solve decades-old mathematical proofs and reading rare graphic novels about the War on Gaza during his down time, murmuring vague and distracted "mmm-hmm"s when his fellow agent Derek Morgan tousled his hair and asked in that smoothly confident voice, "What's up, pretty boy?" or when their Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia came bopping into the bullpen, green and pink feathers woven into her bleached blond hair, and cheerfully inquired, "How goes thee, my boy genius?" or even when their Correspondence Coordinator Jennifer (JJ) Jareau stared him down with those deep ocean-blue eyes of hers and mentioned how her son, Henry, had missed spending time with his Godfather Spencer Reid.  
  
This avoidance tactic was working surprisingly well - even if he could feel the stares of his boss Aaron Hotchner and his fellow Agent David Rossi emanating from Hotch's office straight into the back of his skull as they speculated about the reason for his bizarre, withdrawn behavior and discussed how - and whether -to address it. They probably thought he'd relapsed on Dilaudid. Yes, Reid reasoned, he could most likely be expecting a drug test within the next few weeks. He wasn't bothered by the idea. Hopeless infatuation couldn't be detected through a urine toxicology screening, and that was the only addiction he'd managed to succumb to since he'd stopped injecting opiates.  
  
But then after a few weeks passed with no prostitutes and with sufficient relief from his morning and evening jerking off rituals, Emily came to work wearing _that_ shirt. A sweater, to be precise. Red. No, more like crimson. Tight across her bust, showing off the outline of her pert, beautifully full breasts. Short above the stomach, revealing a hint of her tight creamy flesh whenever she reached up for something and the rise of a lacy black g-string underneath her low-rise pressed pants every time she bent forward.  
  
From the moment he'd glanced up at her from his desk and felt all of the saliva in his mouth suddenly disappear, Dr. Spencer Reid knew that today was going to be a very, very hard day indeed.  
  
In more ways than one.  
  
*****  
  
After the team had gathered in the briefing room, Agent Hotchner began to present the current case. "There's been a string of prostitutes murdered in the Washington DC area," he informed them in his typically dispassionate, authoritative tone. "All of the women have one thing in common: they were using craigslist to promote their escorting services."  
  
Reid felt his vision blur and his throat become dry. With a shaking hand, he reached for the cup of coffee in front of him, wincing as it burned the back of his throat.  
  
"In your folders, you'll find the last known postings by the missing women. There seem to be 22 in all, spanning a period of six months. Fourteen bodies discovered throughout Virginia have already been matched to familial DNA in the missing persons database. And the most recent victim was reported missing yesterday so we'll be operating under the assumption that she's still alive."  
  
Agent Rossi, steady and measured as always, added, "Since the unsub used craigslist rather than street hookers and we've already confirmed that phone contact was made prior to each meeting using a disposable cell phone, this unsub probably comes across as non-threatening to women in his everyday life. He most likely holds a steady job and lives in a middle-class or affluent neighborhood since the women he hired were comfortable enough to arrange meetings with him at his house or apartment. His sexual awkwardness or inexperience may also factor into those conversations and meetings, lulling his victims into a false sense of security. Someone overly charming or confident would have been unlikely to gain their trust so easily. It's even possible that he has never had sexual intercourse without paying for it."  
  
As JJ passed out folders to the team members, Reid was stunned into silence listening to a profile that could have described him perfectly. When he received his folder, he flipped through each page hurriedly and was relieved to discover that they were all blondes. Still, he couldn't help the choked panic and guilt rising in his chest as he stared at the photographs of the women, before and after they were murdered.  
  
JJ's blue eyes surveyed the team as she noted, "this only became a BAU case because the family of the most recent victim contacted the media, so there's pressure from above to solve this case and to solve it quickly. Until now, no one has connected the murders or the disappearances and everyone is demanding to know why."  
  
"I don't get it," Emily murmured.  
  
"Don't get what?" Derek asked. "Why 22 women disappeared before we were notified?"  
  
"No, no," Emily replied, shaking her hand dismissively. "We all know that prostitutes are the easiest targets for serial rapists and murderers because their disappearances are rarely taken seriously by local authorities. What I don't get is why a man would hire a hooker in the first place. Why not just go to a bar and have a one-night stand for free?"  
  
"Because it's not just about sex," Reid muttered to himself.  
  
Realizing that he had spoken aloud and that the team was now staring at him, awaiting further explanation, he looked up and met Emily's dark brown eyes, trying to hold her gaze instead of letting it fall down to where her crossed arms had given him a spectacular view of the black lace bra peeking out from under that red sweater. Speaking exclusively to her, as close to a confession as he thought he'd ever come, he continued. "The unsub obviously has a type. Blonde hair, green eyes, early twenties. There has to be someone in his life who matches that description, someone he's desperately in love with but knows he'll never be able to possess. He hires escorts specifically because he doesn't have to talk to them or get to know them. It would ruin the fantasy. He's not looking for a relationship. He's not even looking for sex. He's looking for ..."  
  
"... a substitute." Agent Rossi finished just as Reid's voice quavered and began to falter.  
  
"So why kill them?" Morgan ventured, interlocking his fingers behind his bald black head. "Why not just use 'em and lose 'em?"  
  
For a moment, Reid simmered with pure vitriolic hatred for his colleague. _Use 'em and lose 'em?_ He wanted to stand up and demand to know how Derek Morgan could live with himself after sweet-talking his way into girls' panties, leaving them the next day without feeling any remorse about all the promises he'd made before screwing them senseless. That was far closer to 'use 'em and lose 'em,' wasn't it?  
  
And then it dawned on him. "I've got it." Reid stood up as the words poured out of him in an excited torrent. "OK, guys, think about it: what would most men feel after paying for sex?"  
  
"Uh, stupid?" Emily spat out, her sarcasm cutting him to the core.  
  
Morgan shrugged, like the idea of paying for sex was as foreign to him as the idea of learning Quantum Physics.  
  
JJ chewed on her lip. "Remorse, maybe?"  
  
"Yes! Good!" Reid shouted, writing the word on the white board in a blue dry-erase marker.  
  
"Shame," Hotch added. Reid nodded enthusiastically and wrote that word on the board, too.  
  
"Extreme self-hatred," Rossi contributed.  
  
"Yes!" Reid responded emphatically, writing "self-hatred" on the board and then circling the word "self" three times. "We have an unsub who chokes these women so violently that he often breaks their windpipes. He feels hatred but it's not himself that he hates."  
  
"So it's the hookers? For not ... living up to the fantasy?" JJ speculated, pushing a blonde strand of hair out of her face.  
  
"No, no ..." Rossi shook his head. "Traces of the same person's semen were found inside all of the victims. He would have become impotent if they hadn't at least fulfilled that part of his fantasy."  
  
After a pause, Emily spoke up. "It's the woman he hates. The object of his obsession? _She_ is the source of his rage."  
  
Hotch cocked his head, a frown on his weathered face. "How so?"  
  
"Well," Emily continued, looking around the table to gauge the team's reaction, "if this unsub is socially awkward and sexually inexperienced, maybe he tried to act on his feelings but he was rejected - rejected to the point of humiliation. He still desires her but he also hates her. It's not the prostitutes he wants to kill. It's her. In fact, I bet he's been using prostitutes for as long as he's been obsessed with her. But the trigger that led him to start killing them? It had to be rejection."  
  
"Love and rage ..." Rossi murmured. "Sounds like we've got a profile."  
  
Reid sat down, feeling weak and nauseated. If he ever worked up the courage to ask Emily out and she rejected him or humiliated him, would he hate her? Or would it be like the everyday embarrassments he endured when the team teased him about his lack of experience with women? On the other hand, if he never acted on his feelings, how much longer would he be tormented by them? Would they ever go away? And was this even real? Was this love or was it just some kind of sick pathological obsession?  
  
*****  
  
At around eleven p.m. - just when conflicts about the profile were beginning to break out between the team and Garcia had managed to link several phone numbers on the missing women's cell phones to some extremely high-profile politicians, prompting a warning from their Administrative Director Strauss to "proceed with extreme caution" - Hotch told everyone to go home. "And that's an order," he added.  
  
When JJ pointed out timidly that a woman was still missing, Hotch shook his head firmly, insisting that a good night's sleep would provide them with fresh eyes tomorrow. "Bring the case files home, examine what we know, and try to imagine yourselves in this situation. Morgan, Rossi, Reid: imagine you've hired an escort to come to your apartment. Prentiss and JJ: imagine you're an escort preparing to meet a new customer at his apartment. The key here is trying to understand the behavior of the unsub before he started killing. Now go home and prepare to report back tomorrow."  
  
Sitting in his apartment thirty minutes after leaving FBI headquarters, Reid dropped the case file on the kitchen table and poured himself another cup of coffee, not planning on sleeping tonight. After all, he didn't have to imagine what it would be like to hire an escort. He already knew. The only way he could ever view this case with "fresh eyes" would be if Hotch personally severed the connection between his ocular nerves and his frontal cortex.  
  
Besides, Spencer had memorized the entire contents of the file within the first five minutes of receiving it. Bringing it home with him was really only an attempt to dodge further comments from the team about his eidetic memory. Sometimes the BAU felt just like being back in high school, where his genius mind had been the subject of ridicule and social isolation.  
  
Ignoring the FBI file, Reid side-stepped the couch and the countless dusty stacks of first-edition British literary classics to open the third drawer of his mahogany computer desk and examine his own personal "case file" - a record of every escort he'd hired in the last four years.  
  
The effect of his magician-quick hands flipping through the pages permitted Reid a millisecond glimpse of each photograph, the features of the individual women combining so rapidly in his subconscious that the illusion resulted in a nearly-perfect composite sketch of Emily. He closed his eyes and conjured up memories and sensory details of the past twelve hours: the soft touch of Emily's hand on his shoulder and the dampness of her bitten cuticles brushing his neck when she'd asked him if he was OK for the third time that day, the violet cinnamon scent of her hair he'd inhaled deeply into his nostrils when she'd reached over him to grab the Splenda for her coffee, the tantalizing glimpse down her shirt and the view of her full perfect breasts covered by only that thin sheen of black lace when they'd simultaneously reached under the desk for a dropped piece of paper ... Although he'd managed to hide and suppress his arousal at work, Spencer Reid's cock now strained against his pants, throbbing so hard and so painfully he knew it would only take a few strokes before he exploded, spurting and shuddering and moaning her name.  
  
And then he'd do it again. And again. And maybe even once more after that. As many times as it took until he could fall asleep, spent, holding his pillow against his chest and pretending it was her.  
  
Just as he began to lower his zipper, whimpering as his hand brushed over the fabric of his corduroy pants, there was a knock at the door. Then three successive, sharp knocks.  
  
 _Fuck,_ Reid thought. _Fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck._ Glancing at the clock, he noticed that it was fifteen minutes after midnight. And that knock ... he knew that knock. It was a police knock. An FBI knock. Oh god. A knock like that at this hour couldn't mean good news.  
  
Reid was already beginning to lose his hard-on as he made his way to the door and stammered, "Who - who is it?"  
  
"It's Emily," the voice on the other side of the door responded. Between the shock of hearing her voice and the flatness of her affect, Reid's dwindling lust was transformed into profound concern.  
  
Sweat gathered on his forehead as he fumbled with the locks and swung open the door, intense worry reflected in his deep-set eyes and the only important question at the moment - "are you OK?" - beginning to form on his lips.  
  
Before he had the chance to ask, though, Emily grabbed his tie, a sultry pout on her lipstick-red mouth, and drew his body so close to hers that he could feel her curves against his quickly-recovering erection as she purred in his ear, "Hey, baby. You lookin' for a date?"  
  
And then she stepped back, collapsing in a fit of laughter.  
  
By the time she looked up again, Spencer was no longer standing in front of her but storming through his apartment and into the bathroom.  
  
As he slammed the door behind him, sinking down onto the cold tile, he tried not to hyperventilate. Remembering his mother's panic attacks. Remembering what he used to tell her when she couldn't breathe, when her hands wouldn't stop shaking, when she said the whole world was spinning and there was nothing solid to hold onto. If Spencer Reid had never entirely understood what his mother had meant when she cried and screamed that there was nothing to hold onto, he definitely understood now.  
  
Emily cautiously closed the door behind her and walked through the apartment, following his path and crouching down next to the closed door. "Reid?" she murmured, genuine concern in her voice. "Spencer? ... I was just kidding. Remember what Hotch said before we left? About imagining ourselves as escorts and johns? I - I thought it would be funny."  
  
Spencer clenched his fists so tightly against his knees that they turned white. "What, so you decided to act it out using a - what did Hotch say? - a 'socially awkward and sexually inexperienced' guy who could only ever get a beautiful woman by paying her? You thought it would be funny? Well, Emily, I guess I just don't understand your idea of humor," he snapped bitterly. Emily had never heard his voice so wounded, so hurt. She'd witnessed him choke back tears on more than one occasion, but not like this, never like this.  
  
More than that, the content of his words shocked her to the core. Sure, maybe he was sexually inexperienced but didn't he at least know that some women found it far more erotic to teach than to be dominated? With that brain of his, hadn't he ever realized that this was, in fact, why _she_ treated Morgan so coolly when he tried to entice her with flirtations and innuendos? Couldn't he tell that the idea of submission didn't excite her in the least and that she lusted after someone for whom every touch, every lick, every stroke was new and arousing and controlled by her?  
  
And ... had Spencer Reid just called her beautiful?  
  
In an uncharacteristically quiet and reserved tone, Emily said, "I actually came here to borrow your case file. I accidentally left mine at the office and since you don't need it to remember the details, I thought that maybe I could borrow yours?" When she was met with stoic silence, Emily stood up. "Never mind. It was a stupid idea. I'll just go back to the office and catch a few hours of sleep there." She paused. "And Spencer? I'm so sorry. I had no idea you thought I saw you that way. I don't, you know. I never have." Another awkward pause. "Well, I guess I'll be leaving, then ..."  
  
"The table." A monotone voice spoke from behind the door.  
  
"Thanks, Spence," Emily intoned gratefully, looking around the living room before seeing the brown folder with the FBI logo. He could hear the click of her black boots retreating from the bathroom door as she called out, "I'm just going to flip through it on the desk for few minutes and then I'll be gone, OK?"  
  
The desk.  
  
Panic seized Reid as he pushed open the bathroom door and shouted, "No, Emily -" but it was too late. She'd already opened the folder and started paging through image after image from craigslist's erotic services of women who all looked like her. When she finally registered his presence, she stared up at him in open-mouthed shock.  
  
Spencer Reid, for once in his life, found himself incapable of speech.  
  
Emily closed the folder and sat down on his couch, her expression dazed and disbelieving, her eyes flicking back and forth as she tried to make sense of what she had seen. Finally, she looked up at him and said evenly, "Reid, sit down. I think I deserve an explanation."


	2. Release

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How does Emily react when she realizes the intensity of Reid's feelings for her?

Reid moved toward the opposite end of the couch and slowly lowered himself down onto it, wiping his sweaty palms on his brown corduroy pants and staring down at the floor as he spoke. "Emily, I - I first developed feelings for you a long time ago. It ... it started to get in the way of my job. I couldn't keep disappearing into the bathroom every time you ... every time I felt ... well, you know. Especially after my Dilaudid addiction. I couldn't just run to the bathroom ten times a day without suspicion anymore."  
  
" _Ten_ times a day?" Emily interjected, her brown eyes widening. When Reid nodded miserably, her nipples hardened against the lace of her bra and she felt a distinct throbbing sensation in her underwear. The idea that Reid found her so arousing that he needed to masturbate ten times a day to relieve the sensation didn't repulse her, as Reid seemed to think. It excited her.  
  
"So, um ..." he continued, still staring at the same spot on the hardwood floor, occasionally running his fingers through his hair in a nervous tic, "this one time when Hotch nearly caught me, I got scared. I got really, really scared. And that was when I started looking for ... well, looking for substitutes. After the first few times I found that I could control myself at work. I channeled my energy into finding the next ... companion ... and the effect would last for a while afterward. I could be around you again."  
  
"Reid," Emily said carefully, "how long has this been going on? There must be hundreds of women in that folder ..."  
  
"Two hundred and thirty two," Reid confessed reluctantly. "Over the last four years."  
  
Emily's hands inadvertently flew to her mouth, covering it.  
  
"I - I know you must think I'm disgusting. I saw how you reacted to the profile today. And the thing is ... I _am_ socially awkward and sexually inexperienced. I can't kiss these .... these women. I can't touch them. I can't do anything with them but ... but get quick satisfaction. Because ... because they're not real. It's not real. It's no different than what I was doing in the bathroom, except ... except there's a woman underneath me." Reid's face reddened in shame. "I know I'm using them and that's a horrible, horrible feeling. But I always told myself that if I wanted to keep working at the BAU, I needed them. For the last few weeks, I've been trying to stop. I ... um, I ... relieve the feelings on my own twice in the morning and three or four times at night. And that's almost been enough."  
  
Emily's mouth dropped open and she suppressed a gasp. Her breathing was becoming more rapid and dampness was pooling in her panties. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been with a guy who could come more than once a night, forget six times daily for weeks! And not only that ... he'd been thinking of her every time. He'd been thinking of her.  
  
As this knowledge swirled through her mind, Reid added morosely, "I know we can't work together anymore. I'll put in a request for a transfer tomorrow, since this is all my fault."  
  
Emily lowered her eyelids, staring at him under thick black lashes. "What if it didn't have to end that way?"  
  
Not understanding, Reid shook his head. "What do you -"  
  
He was cut off when Emily, in one fluid move, slid closer to him on the couch and covered his mouth with her own. It was a deep, hard, passionate kiss and when she pulled away for oxygen, she saw that Reid's eyes were still closed, his head tilted back in ecstasy. She stroked his face with her fingertips and he opened his honey brown eyes. "I -" he cleared his throat, visibly shaken. "I think now you owe me an explanation."  
  
"Your fingers," she whispered, stroking down his arm and intertwining his long digits with her short, bitten ones. "The way they gently trace the points on a map. The way they tap in a rhythm against your leg when you're close to solving a cryptogram. The way they perform magic tricks."  
  
"Your lips," she continued, leaning forward to give him a brief, delicate kiss. "How soft and sweet they look when you're sleeping on the plane. How they turn down at the corners when you're upset and turn up at the corners when you're excited about something."  
  
"Your chest." Emily untangled her fingers from his and reached under his shirt, tracing the muscles on his chest and his stomach, prompting a deep groan from Reid. "How strong it is. How light."  
  
"Your eyes." She paused and stared at him until he tore his gaze away from the fingertips that were still softly tracing the area underneath his shirt. "The way they don't lie."  
  
"You - you mean -" Reid swallowed hard. "You mean, you knew?"  
  
Before she could respond, he grabbed her wrist through his shirt and coughed, "It's ... um, it's really hard to concentrate when you're doing that."   
  
Emily removed her hand from under his shirt and brushed her dark hair out of her face before answering with a calculated, measured response. "I knew you had a crush on me, yes. I didn't know the extent of it."  
  
"And you felt ... you felt the same way?" he squeaked, confusion clouding his sunken eyes.  
  
Despite herself, Emily knew that Reid deserved more than some rehearsed, professional speech. He had shared his deepest vulnerabilities with her, whether intentionally or not, and he deserved the truth. In response, she cupped his hand in hers and began to speak. "Do you remember the explosion at the compound?"   
  
"How could I forget?" Reid responded, his voice laden with guilt. That was the time Emily had outed herself as an FBI agent to protect him, when she had subjected herself to horrible beatings and risked her life for him ... How could he forget?  
  
"That was a rhetorical question, Reid. I know that neither of us will ever, ever forget that day. But you know what I remember most when I think about that case?" She paused, and then reached out with her left hand to brush his golden brown hair out of his face, prompting him to look at her. "I remember hugging you afterward. I remember how we ... how we _fit_ together. And I remember sitting across from you on the plane later and grasping your hands in mine. Do you remember what you did?"  
  
Reid gave her a schoolboy grin and stroked the top of her right hand with his thumb.   
  
"That's right," Emily replied, trying to keep her voice steady despite the distinct, distracting throbbing in her underwear. "I felt it throughout my entire body. I - I couldn't stop feeling it. When I got home, I closed the door behind me and didn't even bother locking it before I ..."   
  
Although Spencer's erection hadn't disappeared since she first kissed him, he could feel it growing harder and straining against his pants as he listened to Emily describe the effect that he'd had on her - that _he_ had had on _her_! - visualizing every unspoken detail. "Before you ... what?" he asked, his voice several octaves lower than normal.  
  
Now it was her turn to break away from his gaze and fix her eyes on the hardwood floor in front of her. "Before I unbuckled my belt, unzipped my pants, and ... and touched myself." She shook her head slightly, the sides of her mouth turning upward at the memory. "It took less than a minute before I came. Sergio didn't even have a chance to greet me with a meow before I collapsed against the door and it was over."  
  
A heavy silence hung between them. Reid could feel the need in his cock starting to reach a new level of urgency; pre-come had already begun to form at the tip. Between Emily's words and Emily's touch - her thumb now stroking the back of his hand - he found himself growing even stiffer.  
  
"And when I realized that I was attracted to you," Emily added, turning her head to stare into his eyes, eyes so vulnerable with lust and desire that she almost didn't want to finish her sentence, before reminding herself that Reid needed - no, Reid deserved - an explanation. So, clearing her throat, she began again. "When I realized that I was attracted to you, I put that knowledge into a little mental box and locked it away." She paused, rolling her dark eyes dramatically. "Yes, OK. I compartmentalized, as you all _so_ love to accuse me of doing."   
  
His entire body trembling, Reid eventually summoned the courage to ask, "So what now?"  
  
Against her better judgment, against every scenario she tried to imagine involving Hotch or Strauss discovering the fraternization of two FBI members, Emily freed her right hand and slowly - ever so slowly, mindful of the massive bulge in Spencer's pants - unbuttoned his pants and pulled down his zipper, prompting a deep groan and a series of tightly-controlled breaths, which she knew immediately meant that he was desperately trying to temper his excitement and that the lightest touch could send him over the edge.   
  
"Oh, god," he cried out, his eyes closing tightly. "Emily - if you - I'm so - please don't -"   
  
But she reached past the elastic of his underwear anyway, inhaling sharply when she grasped him in her hand, slowly stroking the entire length of him. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that his cock would be so ... so perfect.   
  
"Emily," Reid begged, his voice wavering. "I can't -"   
  
"Shhhh. Shhhh. It's OK." Emily's reassuring voice broke through the ringing in his ears as she removed her hand from underneath his briefs. "Just stand up."  
  
"Wha -?" he started to ask before she interrupted him.  
  
"Just do it. Stand up."  
  
On shaky legs, Reid managed to stand, holding onto the side of the couch to maintain his equilibrium. His eyes were still closed, his mind conjuring images of mathematical equations and passages from books because he knew for certain that if he looked at Emily, it would send him over the edge. He felt desperate and pathetic and convinced that his uncontrollable reaction to her would send her right back out the door but if he couldn't even control himself around her at work, how could he have ever hoped to be able to control himself if his fantasy became a reality?   
  
As Emily stared at Reid's tightly closed eyes, watching his lips move slightly as he recited something from memory, she smiled. Oh, for someone who knew so much, there were so many things she could teach him ...  
  
Reid sensed her presence in front of him before he felt her pull his corduroys down to his ankles and then wrap her fingers around both sides of his briefs, pulling them toward her as she eased them, too, down to his ankles, miraculously (it seemed to him) managing to accomplish this without allowing the cotton underwear to brush against his erection. It was then that he opened his eyes, amazed. And a little jealous. Where had Emily learned all of this and who had she learned it with?   
  
Before he could further ponder these thoughts, Emily was on her knees in front of him, licking his cock from the bottom of the base to the tip and then lightly circling her tongue around the head. Reid could already feel his orgasm building and when she glanced up at him seductively, he moaned, "I - I'm going to -"  
  
Quickly, Emily put her hand around his shaft, relaxed the muscles in her throat and swallowed the length of him, using her tongue to apply pressure to the bottom of his cock while sucking hard and rhythmically. Reid had never felt anything like it before and after about fifteen seconds of writhing and whimpering, he felt his balls clench up and his entire groin throb deeply. "Emily, I'm -" he cried out, trying to give her sufficient warning before he spurted jet after jet of come down her throat, which she swallowed repeatedly - a sensation that only prolonged and intensified his orgasm.  
  
As he shuddered one last time and she moved her lips down and off of his deflating erection, Spencer realized that she'd been watching his face through all of it. Suddenly, he felt extremely self-conscious and reached down to pull up his underwear and pants, sitting back down on the couch and squinting his eyes closed. _I came so fast,_ he thought, reproaching himself. _She must be so disappointed with me, so disgusted._ He blinked rapidly, in succession, trying to fight back the tears stinging his tightly-closed eyes.  
  
Reid had always imagined that he'd make love to Emily gently, slowly, that he'd use all of the techniques he'd memorized from the secret stash of "how-to" sex manuals underneath his bed. He never considered the possibility that he would respond like a twelve-year-old boy the moment she touched him.  
  
"Reid?" Emily whispered softly, standing up and lowering her body onto the couch next to him, wrapping her fingers around his wrist when he refused to unclench his hand so she could hold it in hers. "Spencer, what's wrong?" Her concern for him was paramount; it superceded the sticky wetness that had sealed her panties to her body, the rock-hard nubs of her nipples straining painfully against the scratchy lace of her bra, the amphetamine-like gallop of her heart beating in her chest.   
  
"Talk to me, Spencer," she demanded when he bit the inside of his cheeks between his teeth and the corners of his mouth turned down further. " _Look_ at me. Wasn't I ... wasn't this what you wanted?"  
  
"Not like this!" he shouted, his eyes glossy with tears. Emily visibly flinched at his outburst, wondering if maybe it had all been a mistake, if maybe she should have just walked out of his apartment and requested a transfer out of the BAU herself the following day. Her eyes narrowed as she reminded herself that _he_ was the one who couldn't compartmentalize his feelings, that _he_ was the one who had to resort to jerking off every ten seconds and hiring hookers, while _she_ had been doing _just fucking fine_ with her vibrator and her meager dating life. Before she could accusingly remind him of this, Reid started to sob silently, immediately replacing her flash of anger with a heart-sinking revelation.  
  
"It wasn't - I wasn't as good as the fantasy," Emily murmured aloud, her voice breaking on the last word.   
  
"No!" Reid insisted vehemently, pulling his deceptively-strong arm out of her grasp. His eyes opened wide as he stammered, " _It_ was. _You_ were. You ... are. Better. It's _me_. How could you - Why would you - when it was over so _fast_ ..."  
  
A hint of a smile crossed Emily's lips. "Oh, Reid. Oh, sweetheart."   
  
Despite himself, Spencer's heart soared when she called him that. Sweetheart. No one had ever called him that before. Not seriously, at least. With that one term of endearment, his insecurities began to fall away and he permitted her to brush away the damp hint of tears underneath his eyes as he blushed furiously. He wasn't prepared for her touch to turn aggressive, demanding, as she grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her.  
  
"Spencer, do you have any _idea_ how fucking wet I am right now?" she asked him in a husky tone, words that seemed to bypass his brain and go directly to his groin as he felt the beginning of another erection. "I listened to everything you said, Spencer, and the more I listened, the wetter I became. And now? After touching you ... after tasting you ..." Emily slowly, tantalizingly drew out each word, momentarily glancing down at the growing bulge in his underwear with satisfaction. "I want to make you come over and over and over again."  
  
"But I want to do the same thing for you," he nearly whined, mentally begging the hardening in his underwear to stop. "I mean, I want to learn how to do the same thing for you."  
  
Emily let go of his chin and put a finger to his lips. "And you will."  
  
She stood, making sure he was watching before she pulled her shirt over her head and then ordered Spencer to lift his arms to she could do the same to him. Mesmerized, he couldn't stop staring at her breasts. Even covered by her bra, they were ... they were perfect. Then she pulled off his pants, tossed them aside, and unzipped and pulled down her own, revealing her taut stomach and strong feminine thighs. And those panties ... Overwhelmed by the vision standing before him, Reid barely noticed when she nudged him toward the middle of the couch until she spread her thighs and lowered her body down on top of his, straddling him.   
  
Emily could feel that he was fully aroused again, so she was careful not to grind against him even though her clit was throbbing and begging for attention. She could wait. Instead, she kissed him. Soft, gentle, open-mouthed kisses that he returned in kind. When she put her tongue in his mouth, it didn't take long before he followed her lead - kissing her like she'd always wanted to be kissed, with none of the aggression and domination and forcefulness of her former partners.   
  
Emily ran her fingers through her black hair, pushing loose strands away from her face. She kissed his neck and his shoulder lovingly, her full breasts pushing against his chest. Reid - his own voice echoing loudly in his head - questioned tentatively, "Can I - can I touch?"  
  
"Of course," Emily grinned against his sweaty skin, unclasping her bra and shaking it off while she shifted her weight back slightly to permit him access. The look on his face was one of nearly-religious exaltation and, as though in a trance, he tenderly stroked the tip of his thumb across one of her pert nipples, prompting a throaty groan in response. It didn't take long for Reid to discover that he could elicit the same sound, over and over again, by softly rolling her nipples between his finger and his thumb. "Harder," she insisted. "Harder."   
  
He didn't want to hurt her, but found that the more pressure he exerted, the louder she cried out. He moved in to kiss her and when he finally summoned the courage to pull her nipples away from her breasts, roughly squeezing them before letting go, Emily moaned so loudly against his mouth that he felt the sound reverberate through his entire body.   
  
_He_ was doing this to her. He, Spencer Reid, whose face flushed with heat just listening to the ongoing low-brow phone flirtations between Morgan and Garcia, was presently touching and caressing a woman over ten years his senior and with far more sexual experience - and she was enjoying it! No, more than enjoying it. She was genuinely excited by it.  
  
Emily tried to pull away, her chest rising and falling rapidly as wetness soaked through her panties, the uniquely feminine scent wafting up into her nostrils. Could Reid, with his heightened senses, smell her arousal, too? Did he even know what it was? At this thought, Emily bit down on her bottom lip where all of her lipstick had been long kissed away, clenching her jaw hard enough to leave teeth marks.   
  
She was determined to calm herself down so she could concentrate on taking care of Reid again, but when he took her breakaway from their deep hungry kisses as a sign that she wanted his gentle lips elsewhere, he leaned down and slowly - oh, so agonizingly slowly - licked one of her pebble-hard nipples. Hearing the involuntary shudder in her exhalation, Reid grew even bolder; Emily watched that pillow-soft mouth start to suck on the same nipple - lightly and then with more force. But it was the way he anxiously flicked his eyes up toward her face to gauge her reaction that sent such an unbearable jolt through her clit she knew she was incapable of stopping herself anymore. While Reid continued his assault on her breasts, Emily began to move her hips up and down, grinding herself against his cock. Oh god ... when was the last time dry humping felt this fucking good?   
  
At first, she forced her body to keep a slow pace as she gyrated on top of him, the damp fabric of her panties barely grazing the stiff and sticky cock she felt hardening underneath her - but then, finding the angle she was looking for, finding the exact spot on the base of his shaft that perfectly rubbed against her engorged and throbbing clit - Emily began to move her hips more rapidly, frantically, desperately ... Spencer was trying to say something to her, but her own voice was louder as she cried out in Italian, French, Arabic, staring up at the ceiling as the world started to recede and she shuddered with the beginnings of the deep and intense pulsations that were only moments away ...   
  
And then she heard Spencer's "Emily, wait -" as he throbbed underneath her, his dick jerking erratically as spurts of warm semen filled his briefs, soaking through them.   
  
When he was finished, Emily - still panting from her heightened level of arousal - reassuringly put her arms around him, her lips on his neck, trying to kiss away the disappointment she knew he must be feeling. "I'm sorry, Spencer," she whispered in his ear. "I didn't think about you. I'm so sorry."  
  
" _You're_ sorry?" He spoke incredulously, his words pressured and broken up by the faint trace of a stutter, which always happened when he was overcome with emotion. "Wha- What do you have to be sorry about? I'm the one who ... I mean, I think I ..." He stopped for a moment, his brow furrowed with uncertainty. "Wait, you _were_ close, right? To having an orgasm?"   
  
"Yes, Reid," Emily purred in his ear, licking the outer lobe as he squirmed away, ticklish. "You almost made me come." She paused and then added, a trace of seduction in her voice, "Doctor."   
  
Spencer felt himself becoming aroused again and ran through a mental litany of reasons that Emily would never want him now as he silently berated himself - for the thousandth time - for being so incapable of controlling himself around her. Until he felt her once again grinding her body against his, moaning in his ear, "Mmmmmm, god, I love how easy it is to turn you on."   
  
"Really?" Spencer squeaked.  
  
"Oh, yeah," she murmured before asking, batting her dark eyelashes. "So now can we please go to the bedroom and get out of these wet clothes?" Before he could answer, Emily stood up and, in one smooth move, disentangled her panties from her body and kicked them onto his living room floor, moving out of his line of vision and into the bedroom.   
  
Curious, Spencer leaned forward to pick up her dropped underwear, held the crotch to his nose, and inhaled deeply. The scent was overpowering, delicious; the scent was _Emily_ and his cock stiffened further when it dawned on him that this was what he had done to her. This was what he had started. And this was what he was determined to finish.  
  
He - not quite as smoothly as she had managed - freed himself from his own underwear and walked into his bedroom, shocked to find Emily laying over the patchwork quilt, one of the fingers on her right hand lightly moving in circles against her clit. "Join me?" she questioned coquettishly.   
  
Watching the movement of her finger against her body, Reid quickly recognized the algorithm of her movements and then mentally adjusted his calculation to account for the variables of increased speed and pressure. He grinned happily. Sex was really just math, when it came down to it!  
  
"Like what you see?" Emily asked in a low voice, her erotic gaze fixated on him under her dark lashes. When he nodded, she took her finger off her clit and sucked on it slowly, like she had earlier used her mouth to suck on him. "Then show me."  
  
He laid down on the bed next to her, mentally thanking Morgan for insisting that a man of his age stop sleeping in a single bed and for ordering a queen-sized bed with the same mahogany frame as his other furniture, which had been delivered to his apartment on his most recent birthday.   
  
For a few moments, Reid's long piano fingers trailed across Emily's breasts and stomach as he watched her touch herself, his feather-light touch eliciting a long sigh and an increase in the speed of her finger against herself, proving his calculations correct. Putting his hand over hers, forcing her to cease her movement entirely, he asked, innocently, "May I?"  
  
Emily nodded, shyly. Not wanting him to feel inadequate or frustrated if he didn't know how to touch her, she offered, "Do - do you want me to show you how?"  
  
"No, I think I've got it," Reid responded confidently, leaning over to kiss her deeply as his finger found her clit and he mimicked perfectly her own masturbation technique, increasing the speed and pressure he'd observed threefold. The high-pitched whine of surprise she gave as she tilted her head back in pleasure was more satisfying to him than either of the intense weak-kneed orgasms she'd brought him to earlier.   
  
"Fu - fuck ..." Emily shouted. The sensations flowing through her core were stronger, more intense, more erotic than any lover had ever managed to inspire with a finger alone. It was like masturbating in high-definition. Feeling Reid's cock hard against her thigh and his hot labored breaths against her neck only enhanced her desire: unlike the typically-selfish lovers she'd entertained in the past, he was really enjoying this.  
  
 _I am really loving this_ , Reid thought giddily. And he was. It was better than the best magic trick he'd ever pulled off. The circular strokes of his long fingers matched each thrust and buck of her hips, remaining steady and secure even as the droplets of moisture freely flowing from her body coated his hand in her wetness.   
  
When Emily frantically raised her arms to grab the back of the headboard, moaning words in languages he didn't understand, Reid stopped suddenly, remembering something he'd read in one of his books.   
  
"What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Doing." Emily growled, her body so close to the edge, so in need of those magical fingertips, that she didn't care about his inexperience or his insecurities anymore. She needed to come. She needed to come right the fuck now and she needed him to bring her there.  
  
"I remember reading about oral sex, about how women find orgasms from oral stimulation to be more intense than the orgasms they have through manual stimulation," Spencer recited, the words and images on each page returning to his mind in a perfect replication. "I want to ... do that to you. To make you feel that."  
  
"Oh, Spencer," Emily groaned desperately, "we have time to try that later. Just please - please go back to what you were doing? Please, Spencer?"   
  
"It won't take very long," Reid responded with the same uncharacteristic confidence he'd projected ever since entering the bedroom. Emily knew how difficult it had always been to teach her past lovers to use their mouths on her in the "right" way ... So why, then, was Spencer so sure of himself, when his knowledge was limited to books and videos? Hesitantly, she sighed, "OK, but if I don't get off in the next five minutes, you'd better promise me that you'll stop and go back to exactly what you were doing before."  
  
"Trust me, Emily. It won't take nearly five minutes."   
  
As he moved to crouch between her thighs, kissing the inside of each before slowly licking her slit, Reid was mentally double-checking his calculations. After again accounting for the differences between his finger and his tongue with regard to surface area, strength, and dexterity, he reached the same conclusion and knew exactly what to do. After all, math was the one constant in his life, the one absolute. If he didn't trust it now, he could never trust it again.   
  
Lifting her lightly-trimmed pubic hair back with one hand, he put his tongue on Emily's clit and circled it rapidly, intensifying the pressure each time he encountered the lower and more sensitive area and lightly flicking it across the top. The effect was immediate and unmistakable. He felt Emily's hand grab a handful of hair on the back of his head, pushing his face deeper between her thighs, while she gasped desperately for breath and called out his name, over and over again. It was time for the final magic trick: Spencer took her clit between his lips and began to suck deeply, still firmly encircling his tongue around the area.   
  
He was right. Emily's hips flew into the air as her body convulsed underneath him, liquid pouring out from inside of her and dripping onto his face, his chest, the bed. She was louder than he imagined she'd be as she came, nearly screaming his name along with a multitude of phrases in different languages and dialects. Each time her lower body jerked against his face and he heard her calling out his name, his cock grew harder and stiffer. If she hadn't implored him to stop, to "please stop, oh god, it's too much" at the exact moment she did, Spencer was certain that the pure beauty of what he'd witnessed - what he'd _caused_ \- would have made him come again, without having even being touched.  
  
And he wasn't ready for it to be over yet. After all, they still hadn't even really had sex yet.   
  
Spencer sat back on the bed, waiting for Emily to recover from her out-of-body orgasm. It was an image he wanted imprinted in his mind forever: her body still twitching from the aftershocks, her breathing labored and erratic, and her face ... the most beautiful expression of bliss on her face.   
  
When she opened her eyes and looked at him, the last thing Spencer expected was to see them shimmering with tears, but he blinked twice, clearing his vision and ... no, it wasn't an illusion. Emily was about to cry.   
  
His heart sinking and his erection deflating, he crawled up the bed to lay down next to her, afraid to touch her. "I ... I did something wrong, didn't I?" he asked, crestfallen.  
  
"Oh, no, Spencer," Emily immediately reassured him, reaching out to rub her fingers across his lower lip. "You did everything right. You did everything so right."   
  
"Then why are you crying?"   
  
She shook her head, unable to explain.   
  
"Then ... is it OK ... is it OK if I just hold you next to me for a little while?"  
  
A smile appeared through the tears. "Yes, Spencer. It's more than OK."  
  
When Emily raised her body to face him, he put one arm underneath her and, encircling her body with his other arm, pulled her so close he could feel her heart beating in her chest. He inhaled the scent of her hair and, when she gazed up at him, gently kissed away the tears that had fallen onto her cheeks before shifting to the side and allowing her head to rest on his chest.  
  
After a long time, she finally spoke.  
  
"You see, Spencer? We fit together."


	3. Coming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're both coming. But is Emily going?

Reid had always felt uncomfortable with prolonged silences, but right now, with his arms wrapped protectively around Emily, the sound of her shaky breathing and the feel of her jack-hammering heartbeat cleared away all of the chatter typically occupying his brain. Even the sensation of her breasts against his side and her damp, sticky pubic hair against his leg, while arousing, didn't send him into another frenzy of sexual desperation. He just closed his eyes, savoring the moment, with only one thought breaking through the strange quiet in his mind: _holding her is so much better than holding a pillow._  
  
Emily, conversely, found her thoughts racing as rapidly as her pulse. She had never reacted like this to an orgasm before, had never been so overcome with emotion - or joy or love or whatever it was - that she had cried after coming. She'd seen this kind of reaction with some of her female lovers in the past and it had always mystified her. An orgasm was just an orgasm, after all. Just a physical reaction to a physical stimuli. But this time it had been more than that. It was like ... it was like Reid had somehow caused her body and her mind and her very soul to combine when she exploded above him.  
  
But what she couldn't understand was _why_ it was so different, _why_ it was so intense with him. Was it because she'd been on the brink of orgasm for so long? No, it couldn't be that; she'd been purposefully denied pleasure before and sometimes (especially when she was tied up) for even longer periods of time. Was it because his technique was so goddamn incredible she barely lasted a minute after he put his mouth on her? No, that couldn't be the reason; she'd certainly managed to teach others, too, to pleasure her in precisely the right way. Was it because his love for her was so innocently pure? No, that wasn't quite it, either; otherwise, she would have cried after his orgasms, not after her own. Was it ... was it because she loved him, too? Oh, god. Did she love him, too? Did she just break her own rule about never combining fucking with love?  
  
Emily flinched slightly at this last thought, prompting Spencer to hold her closer and kiss the top of her head. Oddly, it wasn't the idea that triggered her involuntary physical reaction: it was the word. "Fucking." Because it - whatever _it_ was - had been so much more than fucking. The mere fact that she was permitting him to hold her at all was proof enough; typically, she'd hiss and claw like a trapped kitten if anyone dared to embrace her like this. It had always felt so possessive, so suffocating to have another person's arms wrapped around her. But with Reid? With Reid, it felt ... free. With Reid, _she_ felt free.  
  
Suddenly, Emily found herself extremely cold. _Were the newly-developing goosebumps on her arms and legs and the hardening of her nipples against his chest some kind of psychosomatic reaction to her mental flight-of-ideas or is it genuinely chilly in here?_ she wondered, snuggling closer into Spencer's body.  
  
Before she could ask, he explained apologetically, "I'm sorry if it's colder than you're used to. Numerous studies have shown that memorization and creativity are enhanced at lower temperatures while delta-wave sleep is diminished so I always keep the thermometer at 73.5 degrees."  
  
Emily broke out into laughter against his shoulder. No wonder they weren't both drenched with sweat. "What?" he responded, oblivious.  
  
"Just get under the covers with me and warm me up," she insisted, twisting her body out of Spencer's grasp so she could pull the patchwork quilt over them, a devilish smile dancing on her lips.  
  
"It's like our own world," Spencer whispered dreamily, staring at Emily's figure in the darkness underneath the blanket. He leaned over to kiss her softly and was surprised when she forcefully grabbed the back of his head with both of her hands, opening her mouth against his and slowly licking deep circles around his tongue, periodically sucking on it and provoking low grunts of desire in return.  
  
Emily carefully swept her fingertips up and down each of his arms and then his chest, gently pulling on his nipples until they were as hard as her own, swallowing his fevered moans and instinctively expelling her own oxygen back into his lungs.  
  
It was one of the most intimate, most erotic experiences of her life: repeatedly inhaling Spencer's erratic breaths and returning her deep steady ones into his mouth. It was like, in this dim and protective space underneath the covers, they could subside on their own shared oxygen. When Emily noticed that she was shivering again, she was positive it had absolutely nothing at all to do with the room temperature this time.  
  
Eventually, she pulled away, head spinning and body pulsating. She felt higher than a stoned teenager, her entire body electrified. "Wow" was the most eloquent word she could manage, her chest heaving and her pussy tingling.  
  
"Did - did you know that tantric kissing can have the same effect as nitrous oxide inhalation or oxygen deprivation?" Reid rambled, frantically trying to diminish the effect of their intense kisses on the familiar urgency in his groin.  
  
"I don't care," she murmured against his shoulder, her teeth gently grazing his collarbone.  
  
"Some have compared it to diffusion hypoxia, also known as the Fink Effect," he continued, as though she hadn't spoken.  
  
"Reid." Emily lifted her head up from under the covers, shaking the quilt away so she could see his face. The sudden intrusion of light forced him to squint, momentarily silencing him. "I really don't give a shit about the Frank Effect."  
  
"Fink Effect," he corrected. "You know, it's actually pretty cool."  
  
"You know what would actually be pretty cool?" Emily responded in her best imitation of Reid's 'academic lecture' voice, rolling her body on top of his and holding his arms in place, effortlessly pinning him underneath her despite his attempts to wriggle out of her grasp.  
  
"Wh- what?" he stuttered, his eyes roaming up and down her nude body, nearly hyperventilating at the sensation of her warm, wet heat against him.  
  
"Feeling you inside of me."  
  
Even as Spencer felt his cock stiffen further against her slick wetness, a wave of anxiety washed over him. _This equation has too many unknown variables,_ he realized. As much as he ached to be inside of her, he didn't even know, this time, what the variables were.  
  
Emily felt the tap-tap-tapping of his fingers on her thigh and immediately recognized the fear and insecurity both in that familiar nervous tic and in his dark shifting eyes. She could reassure him that she found his eager inexperience exciting (again) or she could promise him that she desperately wanted this (again) or she could ...  
  
slowly lower herself down onto his cock with a deep appreciative groan, shifting her hips several times to accommodate his length and girth.  
  
Spencer instantly clenched his fists at his side, not trusting himself to move. He'd never felt the inside of a woman before, not like this, not gripped by tight striated muscles coated in warm molten-lava liquid. To prevent himself from coming too quickly and ruining it already, he squeaked out the first coherent thought that entered his mind: "Condoms?"  
  
"I've been on the pill since I was sixteen," Emily said, releasing his arms to push her black hair out of her face and cup her full breasts in her hands. "And we just had our physicals two weeks ago. I'm clean. Are you clean, Reid?"  
  
He nodded, not trusting his voice.  
  
"Then we're OK." Emily reached for his hands and replaced hers with his own damp palms. He held and squeezed her breasts, his brow furrowed in concentration, before gliding his thumbs forward to tease each nipple.  
  
"That's right," Emily sighed, keeping her body still as she sat on top of him, allowing him to adjust to the feeling of being inside of her. When he became even bolder and rougher in his manipulation, she hissed, "Oh, yes ... That's so right. So right."  
  
Terrified that he was on the verge of exploding, Spencer shook the loose locks of hair out of his face so he could see every inch of Emily's skin, making sure to focus his entire brain on watching her, on touching her, on pleasing her.  
  
With a flick of his wrists, he removed his hands from her breasts and rubbed his palms up and down her ribcage and across her stomach, eventually holding onto the flesh above her hipbone with one hand while reaching down to draw slow circles around her clit with the other. Emily bit the bottom of her dry lips, a smile playing on the corners of her mouth.  
  
"What?" he gasped unsteadily.  
  
"You're a quick study, Doctor Reid." Her voice was low and sultry and the look in those eyes ... such desire for him, such lust. He felt like he could die happy, right now, if those eyes were the last image he ever saw.  
  
Emily leaned forward and began to slide her body up and down his cock, thrusting rhythmically against him. Keeping her pace agonizingly slow, she moved upward until she reached the tip, nearly withdrawing, and then plunged back down to grind against his pelvis. Spencer could feel her growing even wetter and tighter as he increased the speed of his finger against her.  
  
"Move with me, Spencer," she implored, moistening her lips with her tongue. "Move your hips with me."  
  
At first it was awkward, even uncomfortable, as he tried to move in sync with Emily. It reminded him of those FBI physical fitness tests he'd failed so many times that Gideon finally had to obtain a waiver from the Bureau so he could join the BAU. Reid's face flushed deep scarlet from the embarrassing slapping sounds of her body crashing against his.  
  
"Like this," she murmured, reaching her hands underneath him to pace his thrusts so they were only milliseconds behind hers.  
  
Oh god. Now he felt it. Building inside of him as he tried to increase the movement of his finger against her clit, his brain begging his body not to come before she did.  
  
His body didn't listen.  
  
"Em -" he barely managed to cry out before he felt his balls draw up tightly against his body, emptying a succession of powerful spurts deep inside of her.  
  
She never stopped rocking against him, not even when his body dropped limply against the bed and a succession of apologies began to form on his lips. No, Emily started gyrating against him faster, moaning, "oh, fuck ... oh fuck yes ... oh god, don't stop ... oh god, please don't stop fucking me" as Reid's hot come dripped out of her.  
  
And he stayed hard. Between the string of erotic words that bubbled out of her mouth and the sheer expression of need on her face as she rode him, he stayed hard.  
  
Not "I-need-to-come-right-now" hard, but hard enough for her to lean her body back so he could feel the base of his cock against the soft spongy area toward the front of her pelvis. _Her g-spot!_ Spencer thought (and very nearly exclaimed) triumphantly. His mind flashed back to the chapters he'd read on the female g-spot in his books and he held her hips still against him.  
  
"What the fuck are you -" Emily began to snap, struggling to rock her body against him. But his grip was too firm and he used every remaining ounce of his strength to push her off of him, where she landed on her side with slightly more force than he'd intended. Her initial brow-furrowing bewilderment was soon replaced by a knowing smirk when he climbed on top of her and began to rub his cock against her slit.  
  
"You want to fuck me, Doctor Reid?" she purred, her dark eyes flashing under lowered lashes.  
  
"No," he said, leaning down to nuzzle his nose against hers.  
  
"I want to make love to you."  
  
A conflicted, uneasy expression crossed Emily's face and Reid glanced downward so he wouldn't have to ponder the meaning behind that look, holding his shaft in his hand and easing himself inside of her. Not all the way. Just enough to replace that expression with a blissful nod and whimper of encouragement. After planting his hands firmly above her head, he began to move against her in slow, teasingly methodical strokes.  
  
When she wrapped her legs around him, forcing his full length into her, they simultaneously sighed, "ohhhhh," causing Emily to break out into white-toothed laughter while Spencer boyishly grinned back at her in return. He attempted to hold his body upright so he could hit that same soft ridged spot he'd felt earlier, but her strong thighs impeded his movements. _There's a better way to reach it,_ he remembered, his mind flipping through each page of the books he'd read about female orgasms. And then ...  
  
Spencer abruptly stopped his movements and, with pressured speech, instructed, "Put your legs on my shoulders."  
  
After giving him an _I'm going to kill you if you keep doing that_ look, Emily realized what he'd just said. "Spencer, I don't know ... I mean, that's ... that's a pretty difficult ..." but before she finished her sentence, Spencer had already slid his body down, barely managing to remain inside of her as he pressed his head and his arms tightly against her abdomen and hunched his shoulders, waiting for her to swing her legs over them.  
  
"Well, OK, boy genius," Emily smirked, using Morgan's passive-aggressive nickname for Reid as she placed one leg and then the other over each of his shoulders, "show me what you've got."  
  
"Touch yourself," he whispered into her ear and she complied, curving her back slightly to reach her hand down between them, suddenly hoping that tomorrow's work wouldn't involve any physical activity, not after tonight's acrobatics.  
  
From the first deep thrust, she could feel the difference. He was ... he was ... he was rubbing against her g-spot with perfect rhythm and pressure. _Where the fuck did he learn how to do that?_ she wondered. She'd never slept with a man who could stimulate that area so perfectly, as he was doing now. The speed of her finger against herself increased and she began to let out a series of short moans interrupted by periodic gasps for breath.  
  
Oh god, she was so wet that droplets began to trickle down his cock and it seemed like her inner walls were tightening against him by the second as he, too, began to moan, mentally begging his body not to come before she did ... making all kinds of bargains with a god he didn't really believe in if he could just hold out a little bit longer ...  
  
And then he felt it. A series of contractions squeezing his cock and releasing, the most incredible sensation he'd ever felt - until she released a gush of liquid and _that_ became the most incredible sensation he'd ever felt.  
  
Her foreign-language cries receded in his ears as Reid's entire body shuddered with the sheer force of his orgasm and he called out her name over and over again, staring down at her face and thinking _it's really_ her, _it's really Emily_ until the last wave of pleasure surged through him and he collapsed against her warm body, trying to catch his breath. When his limp cock slid out of her, he felt ... empty. He wondered if she felt the same way.  
  
Emily ran her fingers through his hair, tears again springing into her eyes as she planted sweet tender kisses on his forehead. She'd never ... well, she'd never done most of the things she'd done tonight, but on the very top of that list was: she'd never orgasmed at the same time as her partner, always before or after. And the physical ecstasy of that feeling gave way to a torrent of emotions as tears fell freely from her vulnerable dark brown eyes.  
  
Emily wasn't the only one, she discovered, feeling Spencer's tears dropping down onto her face. He remembered all the times his mother told him that no one ever cries when they're happy and truly understood, for the first time, how wrong she was. Because he had never been happier in his life. Not when he graduated from CalTech as a teenager, not when he received his first PhD, not even when he was accepted into the FBI. None of his accomplishments could possibly touch the exquisite satisfaction he'd experienced tonight.  
  
Finally, they kissed like two lost lovers finding one another again, greedy in their passion, hungry in their lust. "I -" Spencer began to say before his alarm went off, chiming Beethoven throughout the entire apartment.  
  
"Is that -" Emily asked, widening her eyes. "What time is it?"  
  
"My alarm," Reid responded, disappointed. "It must be 6 am."  
  
"Oh, shit! I have to go home and change!" she exclaimed, squirming underneath him to jump out of bed and run into the living room to frantically reach around for her clothing. He followed, standing in the doorway looking anxious and insecure as he watched her rush to find the garments strewn all over the floor.  
  
"I'm so sorry," she offered, kissing him one last time before turning toward the front door.  
  
"And you didn't even get to study the case file," Reid murmured, more to himself than to anyone else.  
  
"I had a chance to learn what the unsub isn't," she responded firmly, her eyes locked on his. "And you know what I learned? I learned that he isn't anything at all like you."  
  
"Besides," Emily added softly, barely audibly, before closing the door behind her and descending the steps from his apartment down to the main floor, "FBI agents don't fall in love with potential serial killers."


	4. Going

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Does she love him? Can she love him? And can he wait for her to figure it out?

  
"Where's Prentiss?" Hotch asked after the team had assembled in the briefing room, clearly annoyed by her tardiness. "It's 7:15."  
  
Everyone looked around the table and shrugged or shook their heads in response. Spencer just swallowed, hard, tapping his pencil against the table.  
  
Emily rushed into the room, already pulling off her black jacket and apologizing before taking a seat at the circular brown table. Even with the dark sleep-deprived circles underneath her eyes, she was a vision in her gray turtleneck and boot-cut black pants.  
  
The team's eyes were still on her, pointedly waiting for her to open the file in front of her, when she twisted sideways to drape her jacket against the back of her chair and the neckline of her sweater slipped down slightly, revealing a dark bluish-purple mark.  
  
Morgan broke out into a wide grin and gave a low whistle. "Well, well, well ... looks like someone got some last night."  
  
  
Emily just glared at him in response, pulling her sweater up to her chin.  
  
"So come on," Derek flirted, a glint in his brown eyes as he leaned forward, interlocking his fingers on the table. "Who was he?"  
  
"What makes you think it was a he?" Emily snapped back quickly, her voice dripping with sarcastic sweetness.  
  
"'Cause I know I didn't get an invitation to watch," Derek responded with a wink.  
  
"Like you ever would," she retorted, picking up the case file in front of her and pretending to glance over it as JJ snickered, "Oooooh, looks like she won that round, Morgan."  
  
"Are we finished, children?" Hotch interjected.  
  
"It's not like we have anything better to do, after all," Rossi added, backing him up.  
  
Emily's dark eyes flickered sideways to meet Reid's and she gave him a small secret smile, forcing him to hide his entire face behind the light brown folder in front of him to conceal his elated grin.  
  
"Right," Morgan responded smoothly and confidently, taking charge of the conversation in a way that, Reid knew, would prevent him from being referred to another sexual harassment seminar. "So I've been thinking ... there are some things about the profile that just don't make sense."  
  
"Like ... ?" Hotch prompted.  
  
"Like the fact that we found traces of semen inside of the victims. You're telling me that a hooker is going around having unprotected sex with customers? Uh-uh. Ain't gonna happen," Morgan said, shaking his head.  
  
"Unless they think he's a virgin," Reid muttered, remembering all of the escorts who had assumed it was his first time and offered to "make an exception" for him on their strict condom use policy. He could feel Emily's eyes burning daggers into the side of his face. "But I can't imagine that anyone would expose themselves to that kind of risk," he added, mostly for her benefit.  
  
"Sometimes immaturity can lead to risky sexual behavior," JJ offered, smoothing her long blonde hair over her shoulders. "I mean, come on - how many times have high school girls given into the whole 'I promise I'll pull out' line?"  
  
"And how many times have girls _heard_ that line?" Emily replied, rolling her eyes.  
  
Overwhelmed by a sudden sense of jealousy, Reid snapped, "I don't know, Emily. How many times?"  
  
The team whirled around to stare at him in shocked synchronicity as he sunk down in his seat, his face flushing violently. "Sorry," he quickly responded. "I - I was twelve when I went to high school. Th- that kind of stuff never happened to me."  
  
Apparently satisfied with his explanation, their curious glances dissipated as everyone returned their attention to the case in front of them. Everyone except for Emily, that is. He thought that if he kept his gaze trained on the folder in front of him for long enough, she'd eventually turn away. She didn't.  
  
When he looked up, her eyes were filled with a mixture of sadness and sympathy. Reid didn't know what was worse: her pity or her rage. He'd been expecting rage. He could deal with rage. But pity? He'd been pitied his entire life. Was that what last night was about? Her feeling sorry for him? Between the sleep deprivation, the current case they were working, and that expression on her face, he wasn't sure anymore.  
  
"OK, my pretties," Garcia called out, entering the room and dramatically dropping her laptop on the table. "I've got something weird on the DNA. And when I say weird, I mean super-crazy Grand Theft Auto 'hot coffee' weird."  
  
"Hot coffee?" the other two women questioned in unison.  
  
"Trust me," Morgan laughed. "You don't wanna know."  
  
"What is it, Garcia?" Hotch asked. "Did you find a match?"  
  
"Here's the thing," Garcia said, her eyes focused on the laptop in front of her and her fingers moving at lightning-fast speed, causing her multicolored arm bangles to clink loudly against the table. "I checked all of the major criminal databases and nada, zero, zilch. And then I narrowed my search to include only the geographical profile area, checked several other sources, and bingo! Your Highness found a match." She clicked several times and an image appeared on the large screen in front of them.  
  
"A sperm bank?" Rossi asked incredulously. "Isn't all of that information supposed to be ... anonymous?"  
  
"Garcia," Hotch immediately intoned, the warning implicit in his voice, "do I need to ask how, exactly, you managed to access this information?"  
  
"It's probably best if you didn't, sir," she replied meekly, sinking deep into her seat.  
  
He sighed. "We'll speak later," he instructed.  
  
"OK, so for the last, like, year this guy has been going to this exact sperm bank every day, Monday through Friday. And always at a specific time. 10:00 a.m. But then, three months ago, it looks like he just totally stopped going. He hasn't made any donations since." Garcia paused, letting the information sink in.  
  
"Do you have a name?" Emily asked immediately.  
  
"Unfortunately, no. Only his DNA profile could be accessed electronically. His records have a coded patient number and the only way to find out who corresponds to this number is either on some paper form at the sperm bank or - and here's the bad news - because of paternity litigation, may not exist at all anymore."  
  
"What could have drawn him to the sperm bank in the first place?" Rossi wondered aloud. "We profiled this guy as being middle-to-upper class, not someone who would need an easy 50 bucks to jerk off into a cup."  
  
"And, more importantly," Hotch continued, "what made him stop at the very same time as the disappearances began?"  
  
"Ah-hah!" Garcia exclaimed triumphantly, her fingers again clicking against her keyboard at lightning speed. "Such little faith in the Almighty Penelope Garcia, my darlings ... So check _this_ out. When I realized that the unsub's data had led me to - no pun intended - a dead end, I cross-referenced employee records with work schedules and it turns out that there was only one person who worked that shift consistently: the secretary. And guess who also just happened to leave her job at Project Masturbation exactly three months ago?"  
  
On the projectile screen in front of them, Garcia pulled up the driver's license of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman born in 1986, a nearly-perfect replica of the multitude of craigslist photographs in the file.  
  
"OK," Hotch ordered, "Morgan, Prentiss, Reid, I want you to go to the sperm bank. Find out anything you can about this guy. Someone who works there is going to remember him. Rossi, you and I are going to visit this ... Elizabeth Turner. If the profile's correct, she's his ultimate victim and we need to ensure her protection."  
  
"And the missing woman?" JJ asked, as the rest of the team grabbed their jackets and began to head for the parking lot. "What are we going to do about her?"  
  
"JJ, hold a press conference. Try to get the family to cooperate. Do not answer any questions and do not engage with the media about speculation of a serial killer or discuss her involvement in prostitution. Focus on who she is as a person. It will remind the unsub that this woman isn't his target and maybe he'll let her go."  
  
*****  
  
As usual, Morgan sat in the driver's seat with Emily by his side while Reid was relegated to the back.  
  
And, as expected, almost immediately after pulling out of the parking lot, Morgan turned to Emily and said, "Give it up, Prentiss."  
  
"Give what up?" Emily responded innocently.  
  
"The vampire bite on your neck. Either you had some damn good sex last night or you're gonna start growing fangs and melt in the sunlight."  
  
"Actually," Reid interjected from the backseat, desperate to change the subject, "vampires have never been depicted as melting in sunlight. Most commonly, their skin burns and they turn into ash."  
  
"Shut up, Reid," Morgan said, his sunglasses meeting Spencer's shifting eyes in the rearview mirror.  
  
"All right, Morgan," Emily interrupted. "I'll play. You get five questions."  
  
"Really?" he asked, glancing at her incredulously.  
  
"Really." She paused. "Anything goes, except for 'who was it'? Deal?"  
  
"Deal," he agreed, and then immediately wanted to know, "Male or female?"  
  
Reid could feel, rather than see, the dramatic eye roll she gave Morgan. "Oh, Jesus, Morgan. I hate to destroy your little fantasy, but seriously? Male. Come on."  
  
"Have you ever been with a girl?" Morgan asked hopefully.  
  
"I said I'd answer questions about last night, but if you really want to waste one of your five on that ..." her voice trailed off. _Please ask something else,_ Emily implored mentally. The only person on the team who knew about her college exploits with women was Garcia and she definitely didn't want Reid to find out this way, in a stupid question-and-answer game with Morgan.  
  
"OK, OK, wait. I take that one back," Morgan added hurriedly. "I know. Did he get you off?"  
  
Emily laughed, the sound hitting Reid's eardrums like a melody of twinkling bells as his pants tightened at the memory. "Yeah, Morgan. He definitely got me off."  
  
"How many times?" Morgan asked curiously.  
  
"Three. Which just happens to be the number of questions I've answered now. You have two left."  
  
"Wait!" Morgan protested. "That wasn't a separate question! That was an ... addendum."  
  
"Nope. That was a question," Emily responded firmly.  
  
"OK, fine. Did he get off more than once _and_ , if so, how many times?" Morgan asked triumphantly, quickly adding, "that's a combined question. That counts."  
  
"Four times," Emily said impassively.  
  
Derek swerved off the road for a moment, resulting in a high-pitched squeal from the backseat and a "Derek! What the fuck are you doing?" from next to him as he straightened the wheel.  
  
" _Four_ times?" he demanded. "Not possible. Unless this guy was Superman."  
  
"Well, then I guess I was fucking Superman," Emily smiled, drumming her bitten fingernails on the leather armrest beside her. "Last question, Robin."  
  
Reid's heart stopped for a moment. Robin was Superman's sidekick in the comic books. What if Morgan made the connection and realized that Emily had been with a member of the team?  
  
Fortunately, he just snorted in response. "I ain't no Robin, baby. Just give me a chance and I'll prove it to you."  
  
"In your dreams," Emily retorted dryly. "Last question."  
  
"OK, OK." Morgan thought for a minute. "Was it just a one-night stand or do you love him?"  
  
Her voice wavered when she answered. "It was more than just a one-night stand. And ... and I don't know if I love him."  
  
In the backseat, Reid felt his throat close and his hands begin to shake. She didn't _know_ if she loved him? Then why did she make that comment about FBI agents not falling in love with potential serial killers?  
  
Morgan paused, clearly dissatisfied with her responses. "Well, we've still got a good fifteen minutes until we get there. So I think Reid should get five questions."  
  
"I - I don't know if that's such a good -" Emily began uncomfortably.  
  
"Why not?" Reid asked angrily, his words assaulting her eardums at a rapid-fire pace. "Morgan got five questions. I should get five questions. Question one: did you tell him you loved him?"  
  
Emily cleared her throat. "I - I -"  
  
"Question one, Emily. _Did you tell him you loved him?_ " Reid repeated roughly.  
  
"I - I ... I implied that I was falling in love with him."  
  
"And is he in love with you?" Reid followed up immediately.  
  
"Yes," Emily answered quietly.  
  
Morgan gave a low whistle. "Damn, Prentiss. That's harsh, even for you."  
  
"What is _that_ supposed to mean?" she asked, fixing her dark eyes on the side of his face, refusing to glance back at Reid's wounded expression.  
  
"You don't tell a guy who's in love with you that you're falling in love with him unless you're sure that you are," Morgan lectured. "'Cause what if you're not? Then you just used him and broke his heart."  
  
For once, Reid appreciated Morgan's input, as he gave voice to everything Reid wished was thinking but wouldn't dare to speak out loud.  
  
"Reid, you've got three more questions," Morgan reminded him.  
  
"Do you think you could fall in love with him?" Reid asked in a small voice.  
  
Emily turned around to look at him and the expression in her dark eyes was the only response he needed. "Yes, Reid. Yes, I think I could definitely fall in love with him."  
  
"What would he have to do?"  
  
Emily swallowed visibly. "He'd have to ... be patient. He'd have to understand that I've been hurt before and I'm scared of being hurt again. He'd have to know that I haven't stopped thinking about him for one second since we were together. He'd have to give me time."  
  
"Does that - does that mean you want him to leave you alone?" Reid stammered.  
  
"No," Emily whispered. "I want him to keep fucking me like Superman. I want him to keep holding on and not let me go. I want him to know that I love him, that I've loved him for a long time, and I want him to keep making me feel as safe as he did last night so I can let myself fall in love with him."  
  
Morgan broke into laughter, pounding his hands against the steering wheel.  
  
"What?" Emily asked defensively. "What's so funny?"  
  
"I hate to break it to you, Prentiss, but you're already in love with him." Morgan grinned at her. "I don't care what you said or didn't say. You've got it bad, girl. The only one you need to admit it to is _you_."  
  
No one spoke for the remainder of the ride to the clinic. For Emily and Reid, that silence spoke volumes.  
  
*****  
  
Infuriated, Morgan shook the piece of paper in his hand at the secretary sitting behind the desk at the sperm donation clinic. "This guy put his name down as George Bush and his address as 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and you didn't even _think_ there was something a little off about that?"  
  
"I - I -" the redheaded woman stammered.  
  
"Easy, Morgan," Emily intimated, shooting him a look and putting her hand on one of his muscular shoulders.  
  
"Listen, I know you weren't even working here when this guy filled out his paperwork," Emily said to her, in a far calmer voice than Morgan had used. "But it's really important for us to speak to anyone who was here, either at his first visit or any visit after that."  
  
"The doctor who runs the clinic would have done the initial screening," the secretary offered gratefully. "He'll be back in twenty minutes."  
  
"What about the actual samples?" Emily asked gently. "Who handles those?"  
  
"Well, aside from the donor, they're stored in our lab. The only one who touches them is the lab tech."  
  
"Can we bring the samples back to our lab?" asked Reid. "If the only one who touched the tube without a glove was the unsub, maybe we can get a fingerprint."  
  
The secretary nodded. "I'll bring you the boxes containing his samples and you can transfer them now."  
  
"Prentiss, Reid - why don't you bring the samples back to the BAU and I'll wait around for the doctor?" Morgan suggested.  
  
Spencer and Emily glanced at each other uneasily before the "thump!" of at least 20 boxes filled with semen samples landed on the desk behind them.  
  
*****  
  
"Gross," Emily remarked, carrying the boxes to the backseat of the SUV.  
  
"What, you have a problem with semen now?" Reid asked sarcastically.  
  
"If it's not yours ..." Emily replied flirtatiously.  
  
"You know what, Emily? Don't. Just don't," Reid snapped, silencing her.  
  
After they finished loading the boxes, Emily tossed him the keys. "Here. You drive."  
  
"Really?" Reid asked, surprised. No one ever let him drive.  
  
"Really."  
  
After ten minutes of stoic silence, Emily sighed, "So are we going to talk about this or what?"  
  
Reid, his eyes trained on the road in front of them, responded bitterly, "What, exactly, is there to talk about, Emily? You said you were falling in love with me and you're not. Are there some other lies you'd like to tell me to string me along or was that one sufficient?"  
  
"I wasn't trying to string you along, Spencer," Emily told him, reaching over the plastic cup holders to place her hand on his thigh, squeezing it gently before resting her palm there and stroking her fingertips against his brown pants in a gesture of comfort. "In my last relationship, I got hurt. I got hurt badly. And feeling these same feelings all over again, for someone who isn't just my colleague but my friend ... I'm scared to lose everything we already have."  
  
"I'd rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special," Spencer muttered, his eyes still on the road despite the noticeable stiffening in his pants from her hand on his thigh.  
  
Emily laughed in delight. "Did you just quote _Steel Magnolias_?" she exclaimed. "Oh my god, you totally did! You just quoted _Steel Magnolias_!"  
  
"Maybe," Spencer admitted, the side of his mouth curving upward in an involuntary smile.  
  
Impulsively, Emily leaned over to kiss his neck. "You're just full of surprises, aren't you, Spencer?" She kept her face nuzzled against his, squeezing his thigh again. "That's one of the things I love about you."  
  
Just as she'd realized what she'd said, Spencer abruptly turned the wheel of the SUV to the left, nearly colliding with a car in the opposite lane and sending Emily's body crashing against the passenger side window before making a sharp right into an empty parking lot behind an abandoned diner, hitting the pedal with such force that Emily's seatbelt locked harshly against her right shoulder, sending a sharp painful sting down her arm.  
  
"What the fuck was that, Reid? Were you trying to kill us back there?" Emily snapped, removing her seatbelt so she could massage her shoulder with her left hand.  
  
Spencer stared ahead of him, both hands clutching the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles whitened. "You can't say stuff like that to me."  
  
He'd wanted his words to resonate as a stern warning but they emerged from his mouth as a pleading whine instead.  
  
When she didn't respond, he added, his voice catching like he was on the verge of sobbing, "You - you can't say stuff like that unless you mean it. You - you can't say it unless ... unless it's true, unless it's real."  
  
Emily's mouth dropped open in dismay. "Did you think I was _lying_ , Spencer?" she hissed, her black ponytail shaking back and forth as she spoke, her eyes darkening and flashing in anger. "Do you think I was lying before when I said I loved you but that I'm afraid of falling in love with you? Did you think I was lying last night when I told you all the things I love about you? And what about when I cried for the first time in my life - yeah, that's right, Spencer, the _first time in my fucking life_ \- after I came? What about my tears, Spencer? Didn't you see them, didn't you feel them? Weren't they _real_?"  
  
After taking a deep breath, she unbuckled her seatbelt and gently tried to coax his right hand from the steering wheel; when he refused to uncurl his fingers, Emily forcefully pried his hand free, wincing from the strain on her shoulder, and shoved it down her pants, into her panties, where his fingers grazed her slick wetness. "Do you feel that?" she whispered, holding his hand in place even as he struggled to pull away. "Isn't that real?"  
  
When Spencer turned to look at her directly, even the hopeful expression on her face didn't alleviate the constant mental echo of the phrase "I'm not sure if I'm in love with him," repeating over and over again in his mind like a catchy commercial jingle or a bad Mariah Carey song.  
  
"So you get turned on by danger," he remarked coldly, leaning forward slightly to hide the ever-increasing bulge in his pants. "So what?"  
  
"No, Spencer!" Emily shouted with such vehemence it made him flinch, "I get turned on by _you._ "  
  
"You want to hear something real? Something true?" she continued. "Well, here we go. I have never - _never_ \- been this turned on just by being around someone before. I've spent the last few hours waiting for a bathroom break so I could put in a tampon instead of spending the day walking around in soaked panties. I've become an expert at compartmentalizing, Spencer, but I can't compartmentalize this. Not anymore."  
  
"You know," he replied with genuine concern, "women shouldn't use tampons unless they're menstruating. It increases the risk of toxic shock syndrome by as much as 70%."  
  
"Oh, Reid," she sighed, turning her face away from him to look out the window and releasing his arm from her grasp.  
  
His face flushed. He'd said the wrong thing again. He didn't mean to start spouting off statistics about toxic shock syndrome, but when a drawer in the Filofax of his brain was opened, he couldn't close it until he spoke the words out loud.  
  
Now that his mind was empty - even the devastating phrase from earlier dissolving as the sensation of his fingertips against Emily's wetness resonated through his body - Spencer allowed himself to register the fact that he was the cause of her uncontrollable arousal. Slowly, he caressed her wet slit, the movement of his hand sliding back and forth impeded only by her buttoned, zipped pants.  
  
"Mmmmm," Emily breathed, raising her hips off the leather seat as Spencer curled two fingers inside of her and lightly thumbed her clit. "You don't - you don't have to," she rasped, turning her head toward him, her eyes meeting his.  
  
"I want to," Spencer assured her, all of the anger and hurt dissipating from his deep-set honey brown eyes. "I want to."  
  
Emily reached down to unbutton and unzip her pants, glancing furtively around the parking lot to make sure that their SUV was the only car in sight.  
  
With this freedom of movement, Spencer encircled her clit with his thumb more aggressively, his two fingers pulsating rhythmically inside of her, her hot liquid dripping down onto his palm and her clitoris becoming more engorged, more prominent. He could actually feel it throbbing lightly against him and wondered what it must feel like for her.  
  
 _This feels fucking incredible,_ Emily thought, her entire body numb, non-existent, except for the orgasmic wave building in her lower abdomen. "Yes," she cried out as she began to shudder, her body contracting and releasing violently against Spencer's curled fingers, her clit pulsating and sparking and sending her into a world that was pure sensory bliss, "Yes, ohhhhhh fuck yes, ohhhh god, oh mi alma gemela, oh god oh god oh fuck me, oh mon dieu, ohhhh god yes," she moaned, her body thrashing back and forth against his hand. It took less than a minute from the time he began touching her until her orgasm was over.  
  
As her shudders subsided and her legs began to twitch, Spencer withdrew his hand, putting his two fingers in his mouth to taste her. God, he loved the way she tasted. If only they had more time ...  
  
Emily's breathing was ragged, rapid, but she still leaned over the space separating them to kiss him deeply, tasting herself on him, lost in the pillow-soft pout of his lips, the gentle twist of his tongue.  
  
"Emily," he inquired, his hot breath shallow against her mouth, "what does 'mi alma gemala' mean?"  
  
She froze for a moment. Had she said that? Oh, shit. She knew she often lapsed into Spanish or Italian or French or Arabic during orgasm but she was fairly certain she'd never said anything like _that_ before. She couldn't tell him it meant "my soul mate" in Spanish. She couldn't keep confusing him about her feelings until she understood them herself.  
  
"I don't remember," she lied. "Must be a phrase I picked up in Italy or Paris."  
  
"But wouldn't it be 'mia' or 'mon' in Italian or French?" he replied, curious.  
  
"Oh, you're right." She shook her head, smiling uneasily. "Sorry, that earth-shattering orgasm you just gave me made my head a little fuzzy. It's Spanish. Colloquial, I think. You know, I haven't been to Madrid in years. I really have to brush up on my linguistics."  
  
Not allowing him a chance to pursue the issue further, Emily glanced down at the erection protruding from his pants and slowly licked her lips. "But while we're on the subject of what came out of my mouth ..." She paused, savoring the primal lust written all over his face. "... why don't we instead focus on what I want in it?"  
  
Suddenly, Emily's phone rang, startling both of them. Shakily, she pressed the speakerphone button and coughed, "Prentiss."  
  
"What's your twenty?" Hotch demanded, his businesslike voice filling the car. "We found the unsub and I need you both here. Now."  
  
"We took a wrong turn on the way back," Emily answered easily, her hand stroking Reid's thigh reassuringly. "We're on our way back." The call ended abruptly, without a goodbye.  
  
Emily unbuckled Spencer's seatbelt, unzipped his pants, and pulled them down to his thighs before firmly gripping his hard cock in her left hand.  
  
"What are you doing?" Spencer squeaked, panicking. "We have to get back to the office now!"  
  
"So drive," she ordered, a glint in her eyes.  
  
Spencer pulled out of the parking lot and turned back onto the main road just as Emily leaned down to take the tip of him in her mouth, luxuriously rolling her tongue around the area, sucking lightly but firmly as he groaned in response. God, he was so close already ... even if she just sucked the tip of him a few more times, he'd ...  
  
And then she stopped, raising her head from his lap. "Wha - what are you doing?" he stammered, barely able to keep his eyes fixed in front of him.  
  
"I want to make this last," she cooed. After several minutes that felt like hours to Reid, Emily leaned back down into his lap and licked the entire length of him, her tongue fluttering against his balls, applying pressure to the sensitive area underneath his shaft, darting rapidly around and - oh, god, even _inside_ the tip - as droplets of pre-come became a continuous flow pouring out of him. With a humming sound that reverberated against his cock and sent electrifying shockwaves throughout the rest of his body, Emily sucked his entire length quickly, repeatedly, and between that noise she was making in the back of her throat and her rapid, skillful mouth, he was going to ...  
  
Stop.  
  
She pulled her head back up again just as Reid slammed on the breaks, noticing the red stoplight in front of them.  
  
"Owwww," Emily groaned, rising back into her seat and rotating her shoulder, which had slammed against the glove compartment when he'd stopped so abruptly. "Are you trying to paralyze my right arm?"  
  
"You can't just ... I was about to ... I'm so - I'm so close ... Please don't stop, please?" Reid begged, on the verge of reaching down and taking matters into his own hand. All it would take was two quick strokes, he knew, and he'd come all over the dashboard.  
  
"Shhhhh," she eased, soothingly. "It will be so worth it. I promise."  
  
Several blocks of exquisite agony passed when Reid said unsteadily, "OK, I can _see_ the parking lot from here and I can't just ..."  
  
Before he finished his sentence, her warm mouth was on him again, one hand on his shaft while she sucked deeply and firmly, still making that same humming noise with her throat, while the other hand cupped his balls, stroking and gently squeezing them. Reid was in ecstasy. His vision blurred and he prayed that the traffic would remain at the same pace, that there wouldn't be any red lights, and as he stammered, "Emily, I'm going to -" she took her hand off his balls and pressed hard on the area between his shaft and his anus.  
  
Reid exploded instantly and brutally into her mouth: jets of hot come pouring down her throat faster than she could swallow them, dripping down the side of his cock as she continued pressing and sucking and humming and he came and came and came and felt like he'd never stop coming ...  
  
And then they were sitting at a green light, the SUV stopped and horns bleating behind them, with Emily's black jacket thrown over his lap and her voice calling his name, over and over again.  
  
"Wha - what happened?" Spencer asked, dazed, as the light turned yellow and then red and the noise of the horns behind him gradually ceased. Emily's image came into focus, her lipstick smeared across her face and her concerned eyes searching his.  
  
"I don't know ... you went into some kind of trance or something when we stopped at the red light. I didn't know if you'd start driving again so I covered you with my jacket because I figured it probably wouldn't look too good if you drove past security with your pants down around your ankles." Emily gave a deep sigh of relief. "I'm so glad you're back."  
  
Spencer reached into her lap and squeezed her hand. "I'm glad I'm back too."  
  
"Even though," he added, smiling, "I'm pretty sure I just met God."


	5. Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes answers come when they're least expected.

Hotch was waiting for them, a stern and unforgiving expression on his face, when they disembarked from the elevator. "How is it that Morgan managed to interview the doctor, discover the identity of the unsub, have another agent drive him to the unsub's apartment _and_ bring the unsub back here for questioning before you two finally decided to stroll back into the office?"  
  
"She - she let me drive," Reid sputtered.  
  
Hotch turned to Emily. "I think it would be fair to assume that _that_ won't be happening again?"  
  
"No, sir," Emily responded respectfully, shooting Reid a grateful look as Hotch turned to lead them toward the interrogation room.  
  
"So what's the plan?" Emily wanted to know, staring at the unsub behind the one-way mirror. He looked meek and harmless but god, when she considered what he'd done ...  
  
"I think Reid should interview him," Rossi suggested, his hand cupping his bearded chin.  
  
"But Reid has no experience with women," Morgan pointed out as Reid stared at the floor, ashamed. He hated it when they talked about him like this, like he wasn't a real person standing there in the room. "How's Reid supposed to relate to a guy whose whole life has been fixated on a woman?"  
  
"That's the point," Rossi argued. "The unsub will see him as a peer, a confidante. Maybe he'll even feel superior for the first time in his life. Reid will get him talking."  
  
Hotch nodded his approval and gave Reid a short synopsis: "His name is Michael Taylor. Lives alone in an apartment, seems to make a fairly good living working evenings as a sub-contractor for a private company. We found the craigslist postings with images of every missing girl on his Mac Book, his iPhone, and in a printed folder he kept in his desk. We also found information about the dump sites, including the location of the last missing woman, who has been confirmed dead. He kept a diary of his actions and we're lucky that local PD contacted us when they did: he's been stalking Elizabeth since she left her job, both driving past her house and following her car on a daily basis. On three occasions, he broke into her residence to steal personal items. Photos from albums and underwear from her laundry basket. This unsub is very careful to be discreet; she didn't even notice the items were missing until we specifically asked about them. It's clear that he's been building up the courage to contact her and if he claims he would never hurt her, he's lying. His notebooks are filled with pages and pages of adolescent notions of love combined with the violence of rejection sensitivity. He's a borderline personality with sociopathic traits, and Reid? He _will_ see you as a threat unless you convince him otherwise."  
  
Reid, visibly anxious, entered the interrogation room and smiled weakly at the unsub, whose 90s Radiohead T-shirt and black converse bore an uncanny resemblance to Reid's clothing style on his days off. "Hi, I'm Doctor Reid and I -"  
  
"You're a doctor?" the unsub snorted in disbelief. "What, did you get your degree when you were a kid?"  
  
"Yeah," Spencer admitted, "but I was a really smart kid."  
  
"Well you must be pretty good with the ladies, then," the unsub ventured, crossing his arms and rubbing his fingers over his acne-scarred cheeks. "Never met a bitch who didn't want to be a doctor's wife."  
  
"You see that?" Hotch pointed out from behind the window. "He's testing him."  
  
"And the 'bitches all want to marry doctors' line ... Isn't Elizabeth engaged to the doctor who runs the clinic?" Rossi added.  
  
"Yep," Morgan responded. "He's the reason she stopped working there."  
  
"Actually, Michael," Reid began, glancing at the case file as he pulled out his chair and sat down, "I'm not good with the ladies at all. They find me awkward and weird. Which, I guess, I kind of am. You know, sometimes? I don't think any girl could ever love me back." There was a melancholy tone in his voice that didn't escape the profilers outside.  
  
"Love you back ..." Michael caught on immediately. "So you know what it's like to love someone?"  
  
"Oh, yeah," Reid responded, as though this should be evident. "Actually," he added, lowering his voice and leaning closer to the table as if revealing a secret, "I was in love with someone for a long time."  
  
Outside, Emily flinched at the word _was_ while the rest of the team exchanged confused glances. Spencer wasn't one to tell outright lies during interrogations; if anything, his lack of an appropriate filter often impeded his ability to remain impassive with both victims and unsubs.  
  
"Yeah?" Michael asked, visibly intrigued.  
  
"Yeah," Reid continued. "It took me forever to finally tell her how I felt and then when I did ... But I don't need to tell you, do I? You already know what happened."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I found out that she didn't love me back and it hurt so much that - that I thought it would kill me." Quickly, before Michael could speak, Reid added, "So I get it, Michael. I know exactly what it's like. You tried to tell Elizabeth in so many ways, so many times, didn't you? But she didn't respond. In fact, she acted like you barely even existed, didn't she? And when you couldn't make yourself stop loving her, you had to find a substitute. So you'd spend the whole day on your ... what? BlackBerry? iPhone?"  
  
"Newest edition iPhone," Michael interjected proudly.  
  
"Same phone as me!" Reid exclaimed and then mumbled, "Sorry, I'm kind of a nerd about technology."  
  
"Nah, it's cool," Michael waved his hand in front of his face. "Me, too."  
  
As they continued their banter about the merits of the iPhone, JJ asked, utterly confused, "what is _that_ about? Guys, Reid hates technology. Remember how we had to steal his stupid Razr to exchange it for an iPhone two years ago? I don't think he's forgiven us for it yet. And you can't even bring up the idea of upgrading to 4G without subjecting yourself to a seminar on the working conditions at Apple's Chinese manufacturing plants."  
  
"He's trying to get the unsub to relate to him and it's working," Hotch noted. "It's a ruse. He was never rejected by a woman he was in love with. In fact, he was the one who rejected Lila Archer. How many letters and phone calls did they exchange before he just stopped answering?"  
  
"How long ago was that?" Emily wanted to know, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She knew about Lila - they all knew about Lila - but she didn't know he'd been on the verge of having an actual relationship with her.  
  
"Three years ago, I think?" Morgan guessed. "We were heading back out to Hollywood and pretty boy there was supposed to meet her at a hotel. He just ... didn't show. Actually, I think he ended up watching a movie with you that night, Emily." She was rendered silent, filled with a mixture of shock and disbelief and ... gratitude? elation? desire? or maybe even ... _no, no, don't think it, Emily_ ... love? "You mean, you really didn't know?" Morgan raised his eyebrows, surprised.  
  
"Shhh," Hotch interrupted. "He's inventing a convincing story and it's working. Listen."  
  
"OK, so you'd take your iPhone and go to craigslist casual encounters, right?" Reid said. "You'd click 'has image only,' of course. And then you'd look through posting after posting until you found it. Found her. The one who resembled Elizabeth the most. And you'd blur your eyes and superimpose your memory of her onto the escort, didn't you? Until it almost felt like you were really with her. Almost. But almost wasn't good enough. Almost is never good enough, is it? Not when you love someone as much as you love Elizabeth."  
  
There was a clear sense of relief in the unsub's blue eyes as he nodded. "I didn't think anyone would understand."  
  
"I understand," Reid assured him. "I wish I didn't, but I do."  
  
Outside of the interrogation room, Hotch barked, "Prentiss! Go in and take over. Reid's story has made the unsub feel like his actions were a logical way of coping with his emotions so you'll need to go in strong. He'll dismiss you as non-threatening since you're not his type, and that dismissal will make him even more vulnerable to your rejection."  
  
Emily nodded, reaching for the doorknob. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to focus on the task at hand but she still couldn't make herself forget the fact that Reid would be watching her re-enact the very rejection he'd so heartbreakingly described to the unsub only moments earlier. Instead of the usual pre-interrogation mantra of _Please, god, let me get through this_ running through her subconscious, she suddenly realized that, this time, she'd been mentally pleading: _Please, god, let_ us _get through this._  
  
*****  
  
"That's enough, Reid," Emily ordered authoritatively as she entered the room, motioning for him to leave. "I'll take over from here."  
  
Spencer fumbled with his case file as he exited the room, nearly dropping it, before pausing to call over his shoulder, "Uh, it was very - very nice to meet you, Michael."  
  
After the door closed, Agent Rossi patted him on the back. "You did great in there, kid. Didn't know you had it in you."  
  
Spencer nodded, forcing a tight smile onto his lips as he watched Emily encircle the room like a predator closing in on her prey.  
  
"So you think you love her, this Elizabeth?" Emily finally asked, sarcastic sweetness dripping from her voice.  
  
"I - I do love her."  
  
Emily's harsh laugh was like the sound of a gunshot going off and the unsub jumped, visibly startled. She sat down, leaned against her elbows, and shot forward halfway across the table, her black ponytail swaying behind her head, as she hissed, "You don't know the first thing about love."  
  
Michael smirked, clearly unfazed by her brazen attempt at intimidation. "Maybe you don't know what love is but I know I do ..."  
  
"Well, why don't you enlighten me, Michael?" It was then that Emily pulled out the pictures of the dead women's corpses, taking her time to carefully place each photograph side by side in front of him. "Tell me, is this how you 'love' women, Michael? Is this your idea of love?"  
  
"I didn't love them," he responded, placing his palms on the desk and meeting Emily's gaze, refusing to look at the images. "They were just bitches using me to make money."  
  
" _They_ were using _you?"_ Emily questioned, the disbelief evident in her voice. " _You_ were the one looking for a substitute for Elizabeth, weren't you? _You_ were the one who tricked them into the 'virgin discount' even after your first time, weren't you? _You_ were the one who fucked them and then _you_ were the one who put your hands around their necks and choked them until they couldn't breathe anymore, weren't you? Well, weren't you?" When the unsub remained defiantly silent, Emily looked down and touched each photograph with her fingertips as her voice softened. "So make me understand, Michael. Make me understand how these women - real people with real lives and real families and real dreams - were using you and not the other way around."  
  
"You wouldn't understand," he snapped. "You're just like them. Just another bitch incapable of love."  
  
Outside the interrogation room, Hotch frowned and commented, "This isn't going well."  
  
"Give her time, Hotch," Morgan insisted. "I've seen her break unsubs even tougher than this."  
  
"We already have enough evidence to indict," Hotch remarked, worry lines etched onto his forehead. "And it isn't him I'm worried about breaking."  
  
"But if we stop this interrogation now, we're leaving the door wide open for an insanity plea," Rossi reminded him, "so let's give her a chance. See where she's going with this."  
  
"And if he breaks her?" Hotch asked, turning away from the window to survey the team with a severe and penetrating gaze. "What then?"  
  
"Wh - what do you mean 'if he breaks her'?" Spencer squeaked tentatively, his nervous fingers repetitively dancing against his thigh.  
  
Rossi sighed and went to pat his fellow agent on the shoulder before thinking better of it and withdrawing his hand to instead stroke his stubbly beard. "Spencer, Emily's ... well, Emily's damaged."  
  
"We're all damaged," Reid responded defensively, the words bubbling out of his mouth before he had a chance to censor himself.  
  
"The difference, Reid," Hotch interjected in a flat voice, "is that none of us are too damaged to love."  
  
*****  
  
Emily instinctively knew that the interrogation was not going well. She'd have to step it up or risk getting pulled out - and, for her, that wasn't an option. Failure wasn't an option; failure was personal. This whole case was personal.  
  
"Let's talk about love, Michael," she offered conversationally as she collected the photographs on the table and replaced them with one of the many images the team had found on his hard drive as he'd stalked Elizabeth. "She's a beautiful woman. Sweet, kind-hearted, wouldn't hurt a fly ... Well," she paused thoughtfully, her dark eyes flashing suddenly, "at least that's what her fiancee told us."  
  
Rage crossed the unsub's face as he exploded, "He doesn't love her! He doesn't know anything about her!"  
  
"Unlike you, isn't that right, Michael? You stalked her from the safety of your car, you followed her to her pharmacy and her grocery store and her hairdresser and you even broke into her house to steal her personal photographs and her panties." Emily shook her head slowly. "But you know what? Her fiancee - her _doctor_ fiancee - he didn't have to stalk her to know all of that. Because she told him. She told him where she was going, she showed him her family pictures, and you know what else, Michael? He didn't have to break into her house to steal her panties. What, exactly, did you do with those, by the way? Hold them to your nose while jerking off? Do you really think her fiancee has to do the same thing, Michael? Of course not. Because you know he gets to smell and touch and taste the real thing every single night." Emily bit her bottom lip thoughtfully, pretending not to notice the unsub's balled-up fists or the violence emanating from his eyes. "Actually," she continued, forging a laugh, "based on what she told us, it's really more like three times every night."  
  
"That bitch!" he roared suddenly. "I should have fuckin' killed her when I had the chance!"  
  
Emily sat back in her seat, satisfied. "That's because you don't know what love is, Michael. Love isn't about wanting to have someone all to yourself. Love isn't about wanting to hurt someone if they're happy. Love isn't about _you_ at all. It's about them."  
  
Watching from the other side of the glass, Rossi murmured appreciatively, "Maybe she's not too damaged to fall in love after all."  
  
"Yeah, but it would take Superman to crack that steel exterior," JJ muttered.  
  
"Superman doesn't exist," Morgan scoffed, recalling their earlier conversation in the car, his ego clearly still bruised by the concept of any man capable of four orgasms in the span of a single night. "But I wouldn't worry about it, guys. Word on the street is that she's already found someone pretty damn close."  
  
Spencer smiled giddily, thrusting his hands in his pockets and staring down at his foot tracing the floor in front of him. Tracing the shape of a heart.  
  
He raised his eyes and watched as Emily stood up, shoved her chair against the desk, and turned around before reaching the door, speaking slowly and carefully. "Where you're going to spend the rest of your sad, pathetic life is a place where love doesn't exist. So I'm going to let you in on a little secret. When you love someone, you'd take a beating to prevent them from being hurt. And if you saw them being hurt, being tortured? You'd feel it all over your own body, like it was being done to you. In fact, if it meant protecting them, you'd move halfway around the world even if it meant you'd never see them again. The thing is, Michael, I know what real love feels like and that's why I know you don't have a clue about real love."  
  
After she exited the interrogation room, Emily leaned against the door and took in a shaky breath before registering the eyes of the other agents all fixed on her.  
  
"Nice speech," Rossi remarked knowingly.  
  
"Oh, please," she groaned, rolling her brown eyes. "Don't start."  
  
"Good work, Prentiss," Hotch stated with a terse nod. "I'll overlook your earlier tardiness this time. Just don't let it happen again."  
  
"Yes, sir," she responded gratefully. "It won't happen again, sir."  
  
As the rest of the team dispersed, Emily and Reid stood at the window watching Morgan cuff the unsub. He felt her reach for his hand and, interlocking their fingers, give it a gentle squeeze. Spencer squeezed back, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand. At this gesture, Emily swallowed visibly and turned to him at the very moment they both heard Hotch's voice booming from the doorway, causing both to drop their hands guiltily.  
  
"Before you leave, remember to dispose of the DNA samples in the SUV. We won't be needing them." Hotch left the room as abruptly as he'd entered, the sound of his well-polished shoes gliding down the corridor barely perceptible.  
  
"But how are we supposed to manage a practically-endless supply of semen?" Reid called out after him.  
  
Emily waited to hear the click of Hotch's office door closing before she stood on her toes to whisper in Reid's ear.  
  
"Don't worry, Superman" she murmured seductively. "I'm sure we'll think of something."


End file.
